Backyard barbeque, Fourth of July. My family and I are deep into a game of asshole chicken. The only rule of asshole chicken: first one to talk loses. At the professional level, asshole chicken is an art form. Awkward silence doesn’t matter. Heat pressing on all parts of your body doesn’t matter. Potato salad bubbling in your belly doesn’t matter. All that matters is your sustained, combative silence. To win at asshole chicken, you have to be a pitiless asshole. But do I have what it takes?
My opponents face me like a review board in a line of folding chairs.
My older sister has settled into a fluttering rhythm of brief glances that, if they could be picked up on audio, would sound like you suck, you suck, you suck.
My mother is flooding the backyard with earnest disappointment over her good boy gone wrong. (I’m thirty-four.)
My father has sprouted inch-long eyeteeth.
My older brother is sitting by my father. Together they form a two-headed Doberman, each head with its own unsympathetic, unmoving unibrow.
The heat is ruthless. There’s no breeze to sway the treetops. Also, my face is melting. I’m worried it’ll slip and flop down onto my plate. Worst part about that would be my sister getting up and irritably picking through the pile, going, “Is this coleslaw or face?”
The game could go either way, I guess. None of them are talkers. Neither am I, really, but that’s on them. We never talked growing up. Or, if we talked, we talked all at once, which is the same thing as not talking. So it’s a pretty even match. Only thing is, they have an unfair advantage. None of them are stifling a confession.
Also, do they know what happened with Janie yesterday? Is that what started the asshole chicken in the first place? When I got here, I was sure to casually lie about it. I told them the kiddo was fine. Was I suspiciously casual? Or did somebody squeal?
Still, I’m hitting a pretty good stride, which gives me a confidence boost until I realize we have a spectator for today’s round of asshole chicken.
Next-door neighbor Tony Something stands in the distance behind the review board. He’s lazily dipping his fingertips into the above-ground pool in his oak-shaded backyard.
Tony looks like a regular guy. Gray-haired, lean, easy in his skin. Some decent crow’s feet from all the genuine smiling he’s racked up over the years. Tony looks like a guy who knows things. Like he knows how to cut down a tree. (How to “fell” a tree?) He’s a good guy, Tony. Tony’s somebody I could talk to.
Like I could say to Tony, “Tony, how’s it hanging?” And Tony would say, “Real low, bub.” In fact, I could walk uninvited to the fence line, and Tony would give me a solid but unassuming handshake. Guided by some uncanny Tony instinct, he’d ask me how the family was. He’d remember their names—Janie and Lauren. I’d dip my head, and he’d pick up on something amiss.
“Everything okay, bub?” he’d ask.
I’d want to spill my guts right off the top, but that wouldn’t be fair to Tony. So I’d say, “It’s Janie.”
“How old is she now?”
“Like eight months.”
“Good age.”
“No, it’s not, Tony. It’s really not.”
“You’re right, bub. Eight months is torture.” Tony would know to pause here.
Under the weight of Tony’s patience, I’d spill: “Something big went down.”
With this, Tony would nod sagely. He wouldn’t jump to judgment, and he wouldn’t say much about the game of asshole chicken. If he mentioned it at all, it’d be to say I still had a chance. It’s anybody’s game, he’d say.
About Janie, I’d say, “I was putting her in the car seat—”
“Self-driver?”
“Of course.”
“Sorry, just trying to picture it. So you put her in this self-driving car.”
“We were headed up to her grandmother’s place. It’s like a half-hour, maybe a little more, maybe closer to forty-five minutes, maybe an hour. Anyway, she was fine, Tony. Fed. Sleepy. New diaper, one of those deep-dish deals. And there’s air-conditioning. So I put her in the car, that rear-facing car seat. Everything was all packed, and I was about to hop in next to her.”
“But?”
“I didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Didn’t hop in next to her. I shut the door and let the car drive itself away. I even waved for some reason, like it was Janie driving.”
Tony wouldn’t say anything. He’d be somber and still.
“I didn’t plan on it, Tony. It just happened. I didn’t even know it was happening until it happened. But she was safe, Tony, and I had the tracker on my phone. I watched the little blue car move up the map. I just wanted some time to myself.”
Tony would stay solemn.
“Now Lauren won’t talk to me,” I’d say.
“I don’t blame her.”
“Jesus, Tony, whose side are you on? People use self-drivers all the time. She was probably zonked out by the time she even got to the highway.”
“The car get there okay?”
“Kinda. It parked in the wrong driveway. I put in the right address, though. Esker Road North. Or Esker Road South. I thought I’d pasted it in from Lauren’s text. In fact, maybe she gave me the wrong address. I’ll have to check.”
“What about Janie?”
“She was in the driveway awhile. The people weren’t home. I guess a guy walking his dog heard her crying.”
“Damn.”
“So what do you think?”
“I think it’s some story, chief.”
“But do you think I did the wrong thing?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think.”
“But I’m asking you, Tony.”
Tony would glance over to the review board. “Looks like you’re needed over there, bud.”
“Come on, Tony,” I’d say. “Tony.”
He’d turn and saunter back to his shaded pool.
In the real world, I’m still in my seat as the game of asshole chicken wears on. Real-life Tony is drinking soda on his deck.
The review board has not faltered. My sister’s still broadcasting quiet obscenities. My mother is drained. The younger Doberman head drowses over a cell phone while Head the Elder trains his eyes on me.
Somebody’s ratted me out, I’m sure of it now. This kind of silence can only come from knowing.
Does it matter? I can’t undo it. It happened. Past tense. The car drove away, accelerated, stopped at lights, signaled, turned, got up to highway speed, merged. There are, I know, outstanding questions. Like didn’t people notice a baby whizzing down the road? And what went on in that car? Did Janie kick? Grab at the seatbelt? Did she understand what had happened? Seeing her father recede in the back window, did she cry so hard that her throat became dry and swollen?
I’m fidgeting in my seat. There’s some movement on the review board as they stretch their stiff muscles and glance at each other smugly. They know they’re about to win. They’re right, of course.
A word rushes up like a beach ball from the bottom of a pool: “Tony!” I yell. The four heads turn to me. I yell it again: “Tony!”
It’s a humiliating defeat.
Real-life Tony doesn’t hear me or doesn’t want to get involved. So I don’t say anything else. As regally as possible, I get up, put my plate in the trash, and walk to the car.
I turn on the auto-driver so I can sit in the passenger’s seat. The car quietly navigates the back roads and then finds the highway on-ramp. Out the window, dead trees reach up from the marsh toward sagging power lines. The air in the car turns icy and dry.
My phone buzzes. A text from my brother: Whos Tony.
The marsh turns into broad shoulders thick with wildflowers. Beyond that, woods and bedrock outcroppings.
Another buzz and more brotherly input: Theory here is guy next door.
I let the message marinate. The woods open up into an untended field flanked by a caved-in barn and a leaning toolshed with flaking blue paint.
Another text: Thats Gene not Tony numbness.
Then: *numbnuts.
I turn off the phone and drop it on the driver’s seat.
Yes, I’m dumb. Big dumb idiot. Big fat dumb idiot with no sensation in the nuts.
But mistakes are made. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to believe? It’s how I’d say it in a postgame interview in the Asshole Chicken Arena locker room. Squinting in the TV lights and raising my voice over the hubbub, I’d be candid about my asshole chicken flinch, even humble.
Were there mistakes? Absolutely. Honestly, the performance wasn’t a hundred percent, and we had some tough breaks with the heat and the potato salad. But you can’t go back in time. There’s no undo button in life. Do I think about my future in asshole chicken? Absolutely. Sometimes I think it’s time for a break, maybe even time to retire. At the end of the day, in life, you just gotta take a long hard look in the mirror and think about where you’ve been and where you’re going. And maybe, in the final analysis, you gotta admit you just don’t have the right stuff anymore, and maybe, honestly, you’re just not that kind of asshole.
**(Story inspired by the following Reedsy.com prompt: “Start your story with someone breaking an awkward silence at a family dinner.”)
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